Half-Life Fallout: City 17 - Viewing Profile

Starting today, Steam Trading Cards will allow you to earn Steam rewards for playing games. Those who participate will receive game-specific trading cards that can be collected to earn rewards such as game badges, profile backgrounds, emoticons, coupons, and more.

The first group of games in the Steam Trading Cards beta include Don't Starve, Dota 2, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, Team Fortress 2, Portal 2 and Half-Life 2. More games that take advantage of the Trading Cards will be announced in the next few months.

To see all the details head on over to this handy page which explains what its all about.

From now until July 31st, seven of the top-rated Steam Workshop maps will be available on official CS:GO Classic Casual servers through Operation Payback, available now through an in-game purchase for a limited-time discounted price of $2.99, or $5.99 after the offer expires. It also comes with an upgradable challenge coin, which can be viewed alongside players' avatars. Players will begin at bronze and can battle their way to gold.

Operation Payback is the first in a series of limited-time updates aimed at giving a financial reward to some of CS:GO's most popular mapmakers.

It's not yet listed on the Steam homepage but the game listing is all ready to go live, you will have to wait another short time to finally play it but you can all breathe a sigh of relief. It's here.... finally. Click here to buy now!

Steam Early Access titles allow the community to get involved early and play select titles during their development. The goal of Early Access is to provide gamers with the chance to get a behind the scenes look at games and experience the development cycle firsthand and, more importantly, have a chance to interact with the developers by providing them feedback while the title is still being created. For more information, and to see all the Early Access titles, take a look at the early access website.

The first titles coming to Steam Early Access are:

• 1... 2... 3... KICK IT! (Drop That Beat Like an Ugly Baby)
  
• Arma 3
  
• Drunken Robot Pornography
  
• Gear Up
  
• Gnomoria
  
• Kenshi
  
• Kerbal Space Program
  
• Kinetic Void
  
• Patterns
  
• Prison Architect
  
• StarForge
  
• Under the Ocean

Seems the folks at Valve are pretty impressed with the VR headset The Oculus Rift as in the next few days they are adding Oculus Rift support to Team Fortress 2. Anyone with an Oculus Rift Developer Kit will be able to use their device to play all of Team Fortress 2 on the PC. All game modes and classes are supported with the new Virtual Reality mode.Read up on the VR support on the Oculus Rift website.

"When we first played an early version of Virtual Reality mode in Team Fortress we were blown away by the immersion we experienced.", said Joe Ludwig at Valve. "VR is just getting started, but it is going to have a big impact on gaming. This update will let us share that experience with more of the Team Fortress community."

"Valve's done an incredible job bringing Team Fortress 2 to virtual reality! TF2 is the most-played game in my Steam library, so you can imagine how excited I am to play it in the Rift with all of our backers," said Palmer Luckey, Founder of Oculus VR, Inc.

In addition to gaining access to the new Virtual Reality mode, owners of the Oculus Rift will also be granted a unique Oculus Rift in-game hat. Steam codes to redeem for this item will be sent out by Oculus.